Really, I truly do hope Balsillie gets the team to Hamilton, just to say Fuck You to the owners who tried to keep him out.

It makes no sense to me. Here's a guy who seems a marketable personality, who's built a multi-billion dollar empire, is a fan of the game and could improve the entire image of the game. Yeah, let's keep him out. That makes sense. Meanwhile, they sold the Nashville franchise to a guy who was bankrupt and for LESS cash. Fuck, the NHL does things ass backwards.

Really, I truly do hope Balsillie gets the team to Hamilton, just to say Fuck You to the owners who tried to keep him out.

It makes no sense to me. Here's a guy who seems a marketable personality, who's built a multi-billion dollar empire, is a fan of the game and could improve the entire image of the game. Yeah, let's keep him out. That makes sense. Meanwhile, they sold the Nashville franchise to a guy who was bankrupt and for LESS cash. Fuck, the NHL does things ass backwards.

see?

that's exactly why i stopped caring about hockey and this stupid league some years ago.

I saw a clip of Bettman saying it was the NHL's goal to help teams stay in their existing markets. No, it was your mandate when you took over the league to expand the game in the U.S. through savvy marketing and lucrative TV deals. Pulling out of one of those markets would indicate you've failed you stubborn prick.

He's so out of touch with, well the majority of the regular sporting fan, that he refuses to make a mistake. Really, hockey is a regional game. NASCAR doesn't go into Seattle, NYC etc. Why? It'd be a massive mistake on their part. The NHL though, said fuck it, we're going national, into places with no hockey tradition. When it doesn't work, he refuses to admit it. He wants to be the first team in Vegas. Why? How does that make any sense under any business model? Why not give the team to a guy who's got funds, is willing to enter a hockey market and may even be willing to market the game seeing how the blackberry is a staple device in the business world and really, no business can survive without it today. Is Bettman that stubborn that he doesn't see the opportunity in front of him with the awesome cross promotion RIM and the NHL can do? Blackberry likely has a bigger foothold in the US than the NHL ever will have, so why not take advantage of that?

No, this is just some old boys club, where people who, y'know give a fuck about the game, aren't allowed. MLSE can go fuck themselves if they think they're gonna lose money.

i think that one of the reasons he doesn't want the team to come here is because the southern ontario market is already fairly maxed out in terms of revenue. it's not like there are tons of potential fans here that are currently not spending their money on hockey. in many us cities he has the hope of creating a new market and thus injecting more money into the nhl. in southern ontario, for the most part, he'd just be shifting money away from the leafs/sens to a new team. there's just not a lot of additional revenue generation in that.

now this theory may be totally wrong, but i'm quite sure that this is bettman's line of thinking.